Here at WeblogToolsCollection, we see quite a bit of WordPress theme releases coming through our inbox and I’ve noticed a trend. Hardly any of them include printing support. The question I’d like to have answered is why? Is adding printer support to WordPress themes too hard? Does adding this feature take up time? Or is it that this feature is barely any use to anyone?
For those wanting to add this type of support to your theme, you can install WP-Print. WP-Print picks up where most theme authors have left off by providing printing support in such a way that end users can print either articles or comments, depending on how you have configured the plugin.
In fact, doing a search on the plugin database for the keyword of ‘print’ brought up two pages worth of search results. Another solution for you theme authors out there is called Bunny’s Print CSS. This plugin provides two files, print-css.php which is the plugin file and print.css which is the print stylesheet.
A link to the print stylesheet will be placed in your theme’s header, providing it uses the
gfs_b_head()function/hook. An admin panel is added to the Presentations menu and it will allow you to edit the stylesheet if you make print.css writeable. You probably want to edit the stylesheet provided to your liking, though it will hopefully do most of the job if your theme is sandbox-based.
This method takes most of the hard work out of creating a print.css file, even though theme authors would most likely have to modify the stylesheet to make it compatible with their theme.
For those who would like to manually create the style sheet, there is an article on the Codex entitled ‘Styling For Print’ which covers all of the basics necessary to make a pretty, yet functional print stylesheet to include with your theme/themes.
I hope that by linking to the Codex article and bringing this issue to light, we will start to see more themes being released with built in printing support. It’s not a deal breaker for me, but I’d rather see themes that support this feature than those that don’t. My personal opinion is that, printing support is a nice finishing touch to round off any theme, and having it built in allows me and a number of other users to stop using another plugin.
Now it’s time for you to sound off. Is this a trivial issue, or is there anyone else out there that would like to see this feature in more themes?
I am the proud owner of Serradinho Blog and have made this my second home. I'm into blogging, downloads, WordPress, meeting and helping others, etc. Basically the internet in general :) Serradinho Web Services is my own company whereby I offer my services to clients. This ranges from web design, website upgrades, theme customizations, support, premium WordPress plugins and many more .....
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